Golder W
Abteilung Radiologie und Nuklearmedizin, Klinikum Benjamin Franklin, FU Berlin.
Rofo. 1998 Sep;169(3):220-6. doi: 10.1055/s-2007-1015082.
The impact factor, provided by the Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia (PA), has become the most important evaluation tool for scientific research and academic work. It is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in the journal during the previous two years. In market research, the impact factor provides quantitative evidence for editors and publishers for positioning their journals in relation to the competition. Despite its popularity, the parameter should be used with careful attention to the many phenomena that influence citation rates. The correlation between the citation frequency of a certain article and the impact factor of the journal in which it is published is questionable. A few articles have many citations and the rest are sparsely cited or not at all. Citation impact is more a measure of utility than of scientific value. Authors' selection of references is subject to biases unrelated to quality. Moreover, there is a tremendous bias towards English language journals compared with those in other languages. Finally, different specialties exhibit different ranges of peak impact. The impact factor favours research areas that promote many short-term studies. Conversely, a tendency to treat clinical investigations as less important is created.
由宾夕法尼亚州费城科学信息研究所提供的影响因子，已成为科研和学术工作最重要的评估工具。它通过将前两年该期刊发表的源文献在当年的被引用次数相除来计算。在市场研究中，影响因子为编辑和出版商在竞争中定位其期刊提供了定量依据。尽管它很受欢迎，但在使用该参数时应谨慎注意影响被引用率的诸多现象。某篇文章的被引用频率与其发表期刊的影响因子之间的相关性值得怀疑。少数文章被大量引用，其余的则被引用很少或根本未被引用。被引用影响更多地是效用的一种衡量，而非科学价值的衡量。作者对参考文献的选择存在与质量无关的偏差。此外，与其他语言的期刊相比，英文期刊存在巨大的偏向性。最后，不同专业呈现出不同的峰值影响范围。影响因子有利于那些推动众多短期研究的研究领域。相反，会造成将临床研究视为不太重要的倾向。
